Page 24 of Longest Ride

“Yep.”

“What else?” asked Virge. “Is there more?”

“Only a guess, but Annie thinks if Bobby is dying, he might want to go home to his house in Texas. He has a place in Midway.”

“Do you think that’s what will happen, Dad?” I asked.

Travis shrugged. “No telling, son. It’s a guessing game.”

“We going to Texas to wait for Tammy and see if it’s gonna happen that way?” asked Virge.

“Nope. If it does happen, then we’ll think about it. Not before. That would be a fuckin waste of time.”

“Tammy don’t want to live with us no more, Dad,” said Virge. “You gonna make her come back to Montana?”

“I have no idea what I’m gonna do, boys. This is a crazy mess that Tammy made all by herself and I can’t decide anything yet.”

“Too many variables at this point in time,” said Billy. “We should wait and see if she shows up in Texas first.”

“Yep. This is a wait and see situation,” said Travis.

“What if we don’t want to sit around waiting?” asked Virge.

“You’ll do it anyway,” said Travis. “We’ve got jobs to do, and we can’t take off for Texas on a crazy hunch that Annie has and waste a week for nothing.”

“Are Annie’s hunches usually nuts, Dad?” I asked.

He shrugged.

Gallup. New Mexico.

I put the windows down in the cab and let a warm breeze blow through. New Mexico was warm and the truck smelled bad because of Eldon’s state of dying.

I needed to sleep for a while before I could drive any farther, but I felt like I was getting closer to Texas.

Eldon was out cold and not moving and I took the opportunity to crawl into the sleeper and clean him up. Using water from a bottle, I washed all the blood off of him and put on fresh bandages and he never moaned like he sometimes did when I touched him.

The stitches didn’t seem to be healing and the wound looked red and sore.

Pills for the pain were all gone, and I’d have to find another drug dealer and buy more when Eldon woke up. While I worked on cleaning him up, he never flinched when the cool water touched him, and that made me wonder if he was sleeping or if he was unconscious.

I wasn’t a nurse, and I didn’t know the difference between unconscious and sleeping. Mama pointed out how stupid I was, and she was right. If Eldon died, I was the one who killed him.

I can’t live with that.

While I lay down next to him, I didn’t try to hold back the tears. I slept for a couple of hours and felt a bit better when I woke up. I drank a bottle of water and crawled out of the sleeper into the driver’s seat.

As I started the engine, I noticed all the keys on Eldon’s keyring and wondered if one of them was for his house in Midway, Texas.

“If one of them doesn’t fit the lock, I won’t be able to get you in the house, Eldon.”

Sheriff’s Office. Coyote Creek. Montana.

Molly wanted to know about the day before. The day we spent in the freezing cold and didn’t find a clue where Harry Fleming was.

“The dogs didn’t smell him in the woods at all,” said Virge. “Billy said it was like Harry was never in those fuckin woods at all.”

Molly frowned. “That’s odd, isn’t it?”

---